Gilpin County residents have reported severe phone service outages and have contacted The Mountain-Ear. We have received messages from people who are experiencing constant interruptions with their service through CenturyLink.

One message said, “Wondering if The Mountain-Ear could do a story on what is happening with CenturyLink and how all the outages are affecting not only people but also Timberline Fire, Gilpin Sheriff and Black Hawk Sheriff and what is being done?”

CenturyLink says they don’t have outage reports for Gilpin County at this time, but the County had a severe outage on the day of the false shooting threat at the Gilpin County School on Monday, August 15, after which the schools were closed. According to the Sheriff, communications were shut down that day.

Lyssa Gray, communications director and 911 authority board coordinator for Gilpin County, said, “These outages aren’t only impacting CenturyLink customers. From what we have learned, the fiber was cut due to construction occurring along Highway 40 between Evergreen and Idaho Springs.

“When the cut occurs, depending on location and what networks are being housed in the fiber line, it impacts the areas differently in regard to outages. For example, the last two outages, on April 6 and April 11, Gilpin County Dispatch center was impacted by losing the non-emergent telephone lines.

“These ‘non-emergent’ lines are used daily for residents, visitors, and business owners within Gilpin County to request services. These requests may include service provided by Gilpin County Sheriff’s Office, also serving Central City, Timberline Fire Department, Central City Fire Department, Golden Gate Canyon State Parks, Colorado Division of Gaming, Gilpin Ambulance Authority and more,” Gray said.

“The dispatch center has the first-first responders (dispatchers) available to take the call and then they determine which agencies and responders are needed. Even though these last two outages have not impacted Gilpin’s 911 telephone lines (provided by Lumen), many of the emergencies that happen within the county are reported on the non-emergency telephone lines.

“Our non-emergent lines are provided by CenturyLink, and I had to open multiple tickets with them over the past few outages because they kept closing the tickets without speaking with me.

“I’m not sure why they would tell you that we weren’t impacted, but it sounds par for what I’ve been dealing with. Their internal processes at CenturyLink need some improvements with communications to the customer. Some of the other networks that were impacted included CenturyLink/ Lumen, T-Mobile, AT&T/First Net, Verizon.”

The outages that occurred the day before and the day of the swatting incident at the school were reportedly due to a woodpecker that damaged an aerial line that somehow affected 7,000 feet of fiber under two inches of snow. This was in a different area than the other two most recent outages, but did include many of the same networks, including Lumen (911 provider), AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon,” Gray said.

Meanwhile, Gilpin County Systems Analyst Sam Bower is working on getting grants and setting up a Broadband system for the county. He has brought proposals to the Board of County Commissioners to continue to work on the project.